I have loaded up my freezer with ice packs and bought a big bottle of Advil. The daily whiplash from this trade war is really starting to hurt my neck, which seems to be intimately connected to my whirling, trying-to-keep-up brain. I heard an American business journalist say the other day, after musing about whether his job would be on the line for saying it, “Insanity is not a strategy.”

Indeed. The policies (is that what these are?) of the so-called president of the United States, whose name I can no longer bear to say or type, are so bizarre, so outside any basic understanding of economics, and coming out at such a rapid-fire pace, insanity is the only conclusion most people could possibly come to. As I write this, his trade war has directly erased $4.5 trillion, and yes that is a T, from American stock markets. Enjoyably, his henchman, Elon Musk, has lost dramatically more percentage-wise on Tesla, his main company, than any other business. Tesla stock fell 45 per cent from December to mid-March (by the time you read this point, or really anything in this diatribe, this may well be “old news,” but you get my point). Musk was worth $100 billion less than he was in January.

Nope, that was not enough to demote him from his “status” of richest man in the world, but who knows where this slide will end? It is also evidence that trade wars — and moronic national policy — might affect more than just the nonbillionaires. Obviously, all of this hurts Canada on all fronts too. But considering the effect on his own country, it’s absolutely beyond the understanding of anyone drawing breath. In an attempt to cheer myself up (wait a sec, my ice pack is warming up . . . okay, I’m back with another one), I decided to mentally refute some of his weird claims, and I feel moved to share some of those thoughts here. “The U.S. doesn’t need anything from Canada,”

Mr. FOTUS has said. Well, let’s take a closer look at some things America does not (eyeroll) need from us. One. My favourite is potash. Canada — make that Saskatchewan — supplies 80 per cent of the U.S.’s potash, and it will be tricky to replace that from Russia or Belarus which a) are really far away, ergo more expensive shipping and b) don’t mine as much as we do. For perspective, an Illinois corn farmer recently interviewed by the Globe and Mail spent $400,000 on potash to grow her crop last year. That’s one farmer with 1,800 acres. While Midwestern American soil is among the best in the world, it does not contain potassium. So good luck with that. I guarantee the fertilizer companies will not eat the economic war taxes on this critical mineral. Meanwhile, the farm lobby is notoriously Republican, but will farmers just eat these costs as they bite the bottom line? The uproar to this issue suggests that no, they won’t. Two. Canadian oil. Here’s an example. Calgary, Alta.-based Cenovus Energy owns oil refineries in Ohio and Wisconsin, which convert gobs of Canadian crude into gasoline: 74 per cent of the American Midwest is reliant on Canadian-feedstock gas. For this reason and many others, Americans may not be happy about soaring prices at the pump. Three. Electricity. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has already applied a massive tariff on electricity and threatened to turn off lights in New York, Minnesota and Michigan. Then he backed off, on the promise from Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick that they would have an actual meeting. We’ll see how that turns out.

Our hope, then, in the main, is that deteriorating economic conditions, leading to vociferous objections from the population, will do one of two things. Either he will see the error of his ways, figure out some ridiculous statement that can be read as a “win” and back off his tariffs. This is unlikely. Or the clamour will become so deafening that some geniuses, somewhere, will figure out how to remove him from office. I’ll take either one. I’m sure you know which I’d prefer. But something must happen soon. It’s not just Canada in the fight of its life post-Second World War. What was made completely and revoltingly clear in the Oval Office when Ukrainian hero and President Volodomyr Zelenskyy was ambushed by FOTUS and his disgusting right hand, J.D. Vance, is that the security of the entire world is at stake.

It is largely in the hands of the American people. But Canada cannot back off. It cannot appease. It cannot stop retaliating (although the forms of retaliation are debatable.) As our recently-departed prime minister, Justin Trudeau, in one of his finest moments, said when the tariff gloves came off in early March: “This is going to be tough, even though we are all going to pull together, because that’s what we do. This country is worth fighting for.”

Elbows up.                                                                                                                       

– Joanne Paulson